Its more reasonable than it seems. Actors own a right to publicity, the commercial use of their image, which is only granted in part to the production company for certain conduct related to the sale of the film. They negotiate this reservation of rights with the production companies, who then do not overreach with individual actor agreements on the point. Thus, folks who want to use a commercial film clip outside the scope need to negotiate with the actors to do so. This provides some residual rights for all actors in the film.
The problem is that the standard provision gets in the way of the CC license. There is no obvious or practical solution here. The actors are asked to donate their right to publicity, which is simply outside the scope of the deal. The reason this provision is collectively negotiated serves largely to benefit the union members, but it does limit the scope of flexibility actors in the union have to give broader rights. And it does this by design.
Now, I'm a US lawyer, so I may just be guessing what is going on down under. But that would be the problem if the issue came up here.
John Scully: "The best way to be ready for the future is to invent it,"
Yeah, the sugar water king would ever have been that witty. Not only did John nearly butcher Apple, he didn't do much justice to the quote either.
Conception credit for this particular inventive remark is usually attributed to Alan Kay, leader of the software group at Xerox PARC that gave us Smalltalk and so many pieces of the modern GUI.
Game design is hard. Really hard. Mind-boggling awful, stay up all night thinking about it hard. To build a game that it, on one hand, adequately balanced on so many different planes, and on the other hand, entertaining and engaging, is a tremendously difficult art.
Not everybody is up to it. Very good programmers and artists can get together and make a network-based, super-duper eye-candy fun to play for awhile game that will bring people together, but which will ultimate fall flat as people move on to other games.
Unfortunately, the eye-candy and super-duper programming is expensive, very expensive. There isn't a lot of time to work on hard problems. So, instead of making a GAME engaging, companies often fall back onto smoke and mirrors, which is to say, fake markets that can be arbitraged so easily that it is profitable to set up a gold farm. Duh.
Blizzard has no gripe. Yes, the game sucks when people are able to do anything the physics of the game permits. This means the game sucks, not that anyone else is doing evil.
Blizzard's enforcement is a band-aid over a self-inflicted game design wound. Rather than work on solving the hard problem, they try an easy way -- kick people out of the game by micromanaging the simulation. That's simply solving one problem by creating others -- as they will discover, capital (both the real and in-game kind) is a force of nature, like a river, that is tremendously difficult to reroute. Unintended consequences from this effort are likely, and because their initial design was so flawed as to admit their current problem, it is unlikely their band-aid will hold for very long.
Some games can long survive such atrocities. Others can't. Markets are funny that way. Hapily, there is only one market Blizzard can control, the false and defective one they set up in their game. Maybe they will make it. Maybe not.
Pity the poor Davidson & Associates Cabal. They probably aren't able to do much better than this. They are now stuck in a hard place -- trying to heal a festering sore in a game design defect was exploited by the game players, fanatics and entrepreneurs who are in part the reason for their success. Their solution is probably sub-optimal. I would hope that they were up to the task of actually improving their product, better to redirect all that love and passion back to the game. Apparently not.
Which carries more weight: the right of Apple to protect their trade secrets or the rights of journalists to protect their sources?"
There exists no right to protect a source. A journalist may be "compelled" by legal process to disclose his source, although few actually do, and simply accept the punishment for contempt.
There exists no right to "protect" a trade secret other than by doing what they did -- to sue and hope to prevail.
First Amendment rights are often implicated in these scenarios, and the right to speak and publish is fundamental. But there isn't a right to protect a source, or for a source to be protected. None.
Just hours after reporting that the patent system is utterly skewed to the advantage of large corporations, it is observed that Microsoft continues its appeal of a huge 9-figure judgment against it.
This article doesn't begin to describe how bad it has been for Microsoft, who has been the successive record holder as a patent defendant against comparatively tiny companies (or residual shells of them) since the cases brought years ago by tiny STAC. And now Eolas.
What is more, that wasn't the only bad verdict against Microsoft in recent years. A recent listing of the top 100 major verdict in civil actions included more than a dozen IP verdicts, all against huge companies, with Microsoft appearing on the list more than a few times.
Yeah, its terribly skewed against small companies and in favor of big ones, except for when it isn't.
Fine, so long as the Sealand marketplace is enough
on
Is The Lone Coder Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Patents in the US govern any manufacture, use or sale of a product within the U.S., but also any importation or offer to import therein. Most nations have similar rules. Ultimately, if you want to play in foreign markets, you are going to expose yourself to liability elsewhere, for which you can ordinarily be served by international treaty.
I don't know if Sealand is signatory to Hague, but even if it isn't you still can't do much harm to others or good for yourself from the bitsy island, unless that is where all your assets are located, and everything you want is there.
Sure, you can go to sealand and infringe away, but don't imagine for an instant you can exploit the invention beyond its borders without risk.
were written, primarily, in Apple Pascal on an Apple ][. At the time, Pascal was the only resource available that easily implemented a number of traits essential for building large programs on the tiny (48K!) machines of that era: p-code compiler to conserve space, built-in dynamic segmentation of program code; and a responsible and reliable compiler.
There are typically two copyrights at issue for each recorded musical work you are dealing with: (i) the musical work itself, (the c-in-circle on your CD cover) owned by the composer; and (ii) the phonorecording of the work (the p-in-circle on your CD cover), ownership varies between performing artists and studio.
The rights BMI licenses are performing rights of a musical work at a venue. They give no right at all to duplicate or replicate a phonorecording (there is no performance right for the phonorecords).
I can't tell you whether your BMI license would cover particular conduct until you tell me what conduct you have in mind, but the sense i have of what you want to do isn't close. BMI can't give you the right to download or upload music. Nor, and this is important, can they give you the right to digitally transmit it.
Further, not that BMI only covers about half of the songs "out there." You probably need to purchase ASCAP and SESAC licenses as well if you want (nearly) plenary coverage of all copyrighted musical works.
The artists don't make money when the BMI does. BMI represents composers, not artists.
At least two copyrights are implicated whenver you listen to a recorded song; (1) the copyrght of the musical work (noticed with a "c-in-circle"); and (2) the copyright of the phonorecord (noticed with a "p-in-circle"). The composer owns the (c), the performing artists own the (p).
BMI collects license fees from places like nightclubs for the right to publicly perform the song. That fee is divided using arcane formulae among subscribing composers. It has nothing to do with record sales.
BMI does not sell records, and its revenues do not depend upon record sales. BMI is one of three main competing performance rights associations (ASCAP and SESAC are two others), who control the exclusive right to publicly perform (as opposed to distribute and reproduce) music. Typical licensees are restaurants, night clubs and radio stations.
Presumably, even pirates eat, party and listen to the radio.
Not that I don't sympathize with your position, but BMI is in a different business from the RIAA.
If the stated goal is to punish conduct only, as opposed to create a loophole to the Betamax test so that litigation may be used to effect technology regultion, there are many ways to do that. Indeed, responsive to requests from Senate staffers asking precisely the question you pose in the title to your piece, namely; "what might a viable induce act look like," IEEE drafted its proposal, which can be found at the end of my written testimony.
The patent Act has had conduct-based secondary liability coextensive with a "substantial noninfringing use" test since the 50s. The difference between Section 271 of the patent act, and S.2560, is a set of careful and narrowly circumscribed constraints. A recent federal circuit opinion by Judge Gajarsa discussed the interaction of the patent notion of induce and a Betamax exception.
If folks are honestly looking for a way to clear up the muck and mire that the trilogy of Napster, Aimster and Grokster opinions have created --the absolutely ridiculous proposition that secondary liability for infringing uses of neutral technology should be grounded in the right and ability to control users--, to adequately balance the interests of technologists and content owners, it can happen. It won't satisfy anybody seeking to protect their own interest to the exclusion of others, but it will provide sound, albeit incomplete, protections and avoid chilling innovation.
Recent court rulings have held that developers of p2p file sharing software cannot be held liable for 'for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products.'"
Be very careful -- you are in a land mine here. Do not try this at home -- get a GOOD technology lawyer, and follow his advice to the letter.
Much to the contrary, care needs to be taken if you want to avoid liability. Napster and Aimster cases remain good law. Only if you absolutely divest yourself of any centralized control of the software can you benefit from the wonderful dicta in Grokster. The slightest pimple of centralization can swing a case from an assured defense to a massive victory.
And even moreseo, the fact that the 9th Circuit has taken this view may not help. I have no doubt that RIAA would be thrilled to bring up a case under similar facts in the 7th and let Posner revisit (and effectively relitigate) Grokster.
imagine that an individual wishes not to be bound by the viral limitations of GPL. The owner of the copyright may provide that individual with a traditional commercial license, and the individual may then create proprietary code thereunder.
This does, in the FSF-sense, make the software less "free," in that the proprietary code made by the commercial licensee is not GPL'd. On the other hand, everybody else may continue to relate to the "rest of" the GPL code in the "old-fashioned" open source way.
The issue is not who has the power to act, but rather to whom the actors are accountable. A hierarchy works fine, indeed far better, than a committee, so long as there are adequate checks on the hierarchy.
As to decision-making by committee, the problem is that "None of us is as dumb as all of us." Consensus will almost never equate to moral decisions. This is one of the reasons why the United States operates under a constitution that strips the power of the majority to act in certain areas -- precisely because MORAL conduct often requires sacrificing the will of the many for the benefit of the few.
Some of my brothers here have suggested, in many cases eloquently, that the law should not permit someone to divest their inventions as part of an employment agreement, or even to propertize their inventions at all in order to protect employees from overreaching employers.
This cuts both ways. Many of us would love to have jobs where we are hired to do nothing, but think, dream and invent. Such a law precludes the job from existing? Who would pay to have you think, dream and invent, if they weren't entitled to the benefit of that bargain?
Some have observed that for those of us who invent, we need merely refuse to sign these agreements and refrain from taking the jobs. Others responded that this is nice, in theory, but a practical impossibility for those who want to work -- You have to sign to get the jobs. . And of course, there is always the entrepreneurial route of inventing, finding investors and trying to make it on your own. The truth, of course, is somewhere inbetween.
But if we legislate against alienation of invention, then those of us who invent won't even have the option to refuse to sign the agreements -- the only thing we can do is to go the entrepreneurial route, and then only if we permit the inventor to assign the rights to his invention to the company (how else to raise capital?)
So, at the end of the day, it may well be that maintaining the right to assign the invention GIVES MORE OPTIONS, at least in theory, than laws that preclude it. For those of us who prefer not to take risks and to work for invention mills, the inability to alienate deprives us from exchanging large upside of our inventions for a regular paycheck and the ability to work in fun labs with smart people. For those of us who want to be risk-takers and innovators, we are free under both regimes, unless you go all the way and deprive me of a property right to my inventions and the ability to assign it.
In fact, markets shift. Sometime, smart people are in great demand -- as we were during the bubble. Other times, anybody with technical chops will do. We can call our shots when in demand, and not when we are not. Those of us who are not as good have fewer options. But I am not sure how employment law gives any of us any more options.
That said, I think statutory protections assuring retention of demonstrable previous inventions not previously assigned and perhaps demonstrable previous inventions not related to the business --except for people who are hired to be pure R&D types-- and not made using company resources is not a bad idea. But taking it any further than that is very dangerous, and ultimately bad for us in my view.
This kind of thing is starting to be a hot issue down here with the US-Australia Free Trade deal about to be ratified and bring our intellectual property laws in line with Micros^D^D^D^D^D^D^D America's
Boy, do you have this one all wrong.
Microsoft made one of the worst lists in America to get, the list of the top 100 verdicts for last year, three times, as a losing defendant. Microsoft has been on the business end of more 8 and 9 digit patent infringement verdicts than any other enterprise in recent times.
On one hand, the boss was being abusively negligent. OK. Too bad, so sad, for the state. The problem with management clearly didn't stop with our card shark.
On the other hand, the employee engaged in conduct that, without authority from the owner of the computer, constitutes computer crime.
Whistleblower? Not! The employee had already reported the conduct. There was no retaliation at that time. Only after the employee engaged in conduct that was, well, freaky at best, was he fired.
The employee might have suggested that it would be possible to gather the information and get consent to act, without which his conduct was (i) criminal, but more important, (ii) highly unethical and not a little bit creepy.
of the approx 7,000,000 existing patents, only 614 have been revoked, and only 3927 have had their claims narrowed
True enough, so far as it goes, but misleading in fact. While it is true that 3927 patents were narrowed throught a USPTO administrative process called reexamination, and 614 patents were revoked, to compare those numbers to the 7 million patents issued without more is nothing short of ludicrous.
First, while 7 million patents issued since the late 18th century, patent reexamination has only been around as an administrative process since the early 1980s. The relevant measure for the ease of invalidating a patent through reexamination would consider not the total number of patents issued in the last 200 years, but rather the total number of reexaminations in the last 20.
Second, patent are invalidated through many processes, reexamination being but one of them. Patents may be, and are, invalidated through litigation and patent interferences as well. None of those statistics were offered.
No, it is not easy to invalidate the patent. But yes, it is very easy to lie with statistics to try to prove that point.
Actually, I don't. To the extent I have a gut feeling about it, I have no evidence, and only answer when someone asks me the question along the lines of "what do you think?" Usually, they then challenge me, and I answer, "hey, you just asked what I thought. I'm sure its what I think, can't tell you why except for a few rationalizations, but have no idea if its right."
Here's to truth-seeking and honest debate! I credit you for acknowledging the limits of perception, and hope you recognize that I share your appreciation for the lack of trust in the non-falsifiable.
That said, please review what I wrote -- I was not referring to the stats you excoriated.
Please stop twisting words. Copying is not stealing. Not in the law, and not in the minds of the general population.
This is petty pedantry. Indeed, the copying of a work is not the taking and asportation of the personal property of another, which is one definition of the word, to steal. On the other hand, it is stealing, per Webster's Third New International, "to appropriate and use as one's own " Also, if you look up "copy" at the webster's online website, you find "steal" as a "related word," and vice-versa.
Whether or not you deem it to be akin to boosting a ferrari, make no mistake about it. The law treats such conduct as criminal in many cases, and the victim (owner of the infringed copyright) is entitled to significant civil remedies -- indeed, better remedies than would be available under a mere civil theft statute.
Wait -- you're trying to tell me that the BSA's report on the billions that the software industry is losing is based on some sort of fact? It's just as bullshit as saying that pirating software increases the userbase.
. ..
In any case, is it that difficult to believe that piracy increases a userbase? I totally believe that piracy has almost certainly helped Microsoft reach market dominance
Right, but I presume from what you wrote above, we must be able to conclude that your total belief is "just as bullshit as saying that" BSA suffered all those damages?
Wait -- you're trying to tell me that the BSA's report on the billions that the software industry is losing is based on some sort of fact?
No, that is a straw man, and not what I said.
The BSA objectively estimates, not that it is losing all that money, but rather that the value of the software infringed is equal to that money. The conclusions drawn from those statistics are legitimately questioned in terms of the reasonable amount of actual loss, with arguments to be made on both sides.
To be clear, this is precisely my sentiment. To the extent the views of the original author are correct, that is, that familiarity breeds commercial success, this is not an argument for infringement, but for non-infringement and creating or substituting free alternatives. To the extent he is not correct, it is that much stronger an argument not to infringe.
My view is that whatever one might think about the Coyright Act, the chose in action and the copyright itself it is in fact the personal property of the author and owner. Don't infringe the rights of another, if for no other reason than they are not your rights. Make your own.
but the larger the user base that knows your software, the more valuable it is and more likely it is to be purchased
And the more widely distributed for free is the software, the less valuable it is and the less likely it is to be purchased.
Here's the deal. Duplicating my software, without my consent, is NOT flattering to me, nor is it beneficial to me. If it were, I would give it away for free, or give limited versions for free, as I choose.
Still, a hax0r kiddie who steals a copy of Autocad is no skin off of anyone's back, because he was never a potential customer to begin with. But if he learns it, and eventually ends up in the business world, then that's one more license sold for Autodesk.
A common rationalization not borne out by statistics or experience. As between the freeloader who wants to take software for free, and the software vendor who wants to sell software, I leave it to the latter to decide what is the best, most likely way for them to optimize the relationship.
In any case, the hax0r kiddie who steals a copy of Autocad had better do so covertly -- for serious damages and possible criminal responsibility await if he gets caught.
All things considered, why steal software that isn't yours? If they won't give it to you for free on your terms, make your own. if you can't, and can't human engineer yourself a legitimate copy, but nevertheless descide to steal from people without permission, please OH PLEASE, spare me the homily how you are doing the vendor (or society) a service by training the workforce.
Slashdot Mirror
Its more reasonable than it seems. Actors own a right to publicity, the commercial use of their image, which is only granted in part to the production company for certain conduct related to the sale of the film. They negotiate this reservation of rights with the production companies, who then do not overreach with individual actor agreements on the point. Thus, folks who want to use a commercial film clip outside the scope need to negotiate with the actors to do so. This provides some residual rights for all actors in the film.
The problem is that the standard provision gets in the way of the CC license. There is no obvious or practical solution here. The actors are asked to donate their right to publicity, which is simply outside the scope of the deal. The reason this provision is collectively negotiated serves largely to benefit the union members, but it does limit the scope of flexibility actors in the union have to give broader rights. And it does this by design.
Now, I'm a US lawyer, so I may just be guessing what is going on down under. But that would be the problem if the issue came up here.
John Scully: "The best way to be ready for the future is to invent it,"
Yeah, the sugar water king would ever have been that witty. Not only did John nearly butcher Apple, he didn't do much justice to the quote either.
Conception credit for this particular inventive remark is usually attributed to Alan Kay, leader of the software group at Xerox PARC that gave us Smalltalk and so many pieces of the modern GUI.
Game design is hard. Really hard. Mind-boggling awful, stay up all night thinking about it hard. To build a game that it, on one hand, adequately balanced on so many different planes, and on the other hand, entertaining and engaging, is a tremendously difficult art.
Not everybody is up to it. Very good programmers and artists can get together and make a network-based, super-duper eye-candy fun to play for awhile game that will bring people together, but which will ultimate fall flat as people move on to other games.
Unfortunately, the eye-candy and super-duper programming is expensive, very expensive. There isn't a lot of time to work on hard problems. So, instead of making a GAME engaging, companies often fall back onto smoke and mirrors, which is to say, fake markets that can be arbitraged so easily that it is profitable to set up a gold farm. Duh.
Blizzard has no gripe. Yes, the game sucks when people are able to do anything the physics of the game permits. This means the game sucks, not that anyone else is doing evil.
Blizzard's enforcement is a band-aid over a self-inflicted game design wound. Rather than work on solving the hard problem, they try an easy way -- kick people out of the game by micromanaging the simulation. That's simply solving one problem by creating others -- as they will discover, capital (both the real and in-game kind) is a force of nature, like a river, that is tremendously difficult to reroute. Unintended consequences from this effort are likely, and because their initial design was so flawed as to admit their current problem, it is unlikely their band-aid will hold for very long.
Some games can long survive such atrocities. Others can't. Markets are funny that way. Hapily, there is only one market Blizzard can control, the false and defective one they set up in their game. Maybe they will make it. Maybe not.
Pity the poor Davidson & Associates Cabal. They probably aren't able to do much better than this. They are now stuck in a hard place -- trying to heal a festering sore in a game design defect was exploited by the game players, fanatics and entrepreneurs who are in part the reason for their success. Their solution is probably sub-optimal. I would hope that they were up to the task of actually improving their product, better to redirect all that love and passion back to the game. Apparently not.
Which carries more weight: the right of Apple to protect their trade secrets or the rights of journalists to protect their sources?"
There exists no right to protect a source. A journalist may be "compelled" by legal process to disclose his source, although few actually do, and simply accept the punishment for contempt.
There exists no right to "protect" a trade secret other than by doing what they did -- to sue and hope to prevail.
First Amendment rights are often implicated in these scenarios, and the right to speak and publish is fundamental. But there isn't a right to protect a source, or for a source to be protected. None.
Just hours after reporting that the patent system is utterly skewed to the advantage of large corporations, it is observed that Microsoft continues its appeal of a huge 9-figure judgment against it.
This article doesn't begin to describe how bad it has been for Microsoft, who has been the successive record holder as a patent defendant against comparatively tiny companies (or residual shells of them) since the cases brought years ago by tiny STAC. And now Eolas.
What is more, that wasn't the only bad verdict against Microsoft in recent years. A recent listing of the top 100 major verdict in civil actions included more than a dozen IP verdicts, all against huge companies, with Microsoft appearing on the list more than a few times.
Yeah, its terribly skewed against small companies and in favor of big ones, except for when it isn't.
Patents in the US govern any manufacture, use or sale of a product within the U.S., but also any importation or offer to import therein. Most nations have similar rules. Ultimately, if you want to play in foreign markets, you are going to expose yourself to liability elsewhere, for which you can ordinarily be served by international treaty.
I don't know if Sealand is signatory to Hague, but even if it isn't you still can't do much harm to others or good for yourself from the bitsy island, unless that is where all your assets are located, and everything you want is there.
Sure, you can go to sealand and infringe away, but don't imagine for an instant you can exploit the invention beyond its borders without risk.
were written, primarily, in Apple Pascal on an Apple ][. At the time, Pascal was the only resource available that easily implemented a number of traits essential for building large programs on the tiny (48K!) machines of that era: p-code compiler to conserve space, built-in dynamic segmentation of program code; and a responsible and reliable compiler.
There are typically two copyrights at issue for each recorded musical work you are dealing with: (i) the musical work itself, (the c-in-circle on your CD cover) owned by the composer; and (ii) the phonorecording of the work (the p-in-circle on your CD cover), ownership varies between performing artists and studio.
The rights BMI licenses are performing rights of a musical work at a venue. They give no right at all to duplicate or replicate a phonorecording (there is no performance right for the phonorecords).
I can't tell you whether your BMI license would cover particular conduct until you tell me what conduct you have in mind, but the sense i have of what you want to do isn't close. BMI can't give you the right to download or upload music. Nor, and this is important, can they give you the right to digitally transmit it.
Further, not that BMI only covers about half of the songs "out there." You probably need to purchase ASCAP and SESAC licenses as well if you want (nearly) plenary coverage of all copyrighted musical works.
The artists don't make money when the BMI does. BMI represents composers, not artists.
At least two copyrights are implicated whenver you listen to a recorded song; (1) the copyrght of the musical work (noticed with a "c-in-circle"); and (2) the copyright of the phonorecord (noticed with a "p-in-circle"). The composer owns the (c), the performing artists own the (p).
BMI collects license fees from places like nightclubs for the right to publicly perform the song. That fee is divided using arcane formulae among subscribing composers. It has nothing to do with record sales.
BMI does not sell records, and its revenues do not depend upon record sales. BMI is one of three main competing performance rights associations (ASCAP and SESAC are two others), who control the exclusive right to publicly perform (as opposed to distribute and reproduce) music. Typical licensees are restaurants, night clubs and radio stations.
Presumably, even pirates eat, party and listen to the radio.
Not that I don't sympathize with your position, but BMI is in a different business from the RIAA.
If the stated goal is to punish conduct only, as opposed to create a loophole to the Betamax test so that litigation may be used to effect technology regultion, there are many ways to do that. Indeed, responsive to requests from Senate staffers asking precisely the question you pose in the title to your piece, namely; "what might a viable induce act look like," IEEE drafted its proposal, which can be found at the end of my written testimony.
The patent Act has had conduct-based secondary liability coextensive with a "substantial noninfringing use" test since the 50s. The difference between Section 271 of the patent act, and S.2560, is a set of careful and narrowly circumscribed constraints. A recent federal circuit opinion by Judge Gajarsa discussed the interaction of the patent notion of induce and a Betamax exception.
If folks are honestly looking for a way to clear up the muck and mire that the trilogy of Napster, Aimster and Grokster opinions have created --the absolutely ridiculous proposition that secondary liability for infringing uses of neutral technology should be grounded in the right and ability to control users--, to adequately balance the interests of technologists and content owners, it can happen. It won't satisfy anybody seeking to protect their own interest to the exclusion of others, but it will provide sound, albeit incomplete, protections and avoid chilling innovation.
Recent court rulings have held that developers of p2p file sharing software cannot be held liable for 'for any copyright infringement committed by people using their products.'"
Be very careful -- you are in a land mine here. Do not try this at home -- get a GOOD technology lawyer, and follow his advice to the letter.
Much to the contrary, care needs to be taken if you want to avoid liability. Napster and Aimster cases remain good law. Only if you absolutely divest yourself of any centralized control of the software can you benefit from the wonderful dicta in Grokster. The slightest pimple of centralization can swing a case from an assured defense to a massive victory.
And even moreseo, the fact that the 9th Circuit has taken this view may not help. I have no doubt that RIAA would be thrilled to bring up a case under similar facts in the 7th and let Posner revisit (and effectively relitigate) Grokster.
imagine that an individual wishes not to be bound by the viral limitations of GPL. The owner of the copyright may provide that individual with a traditional commercial license, and the individual may then create proprietary code thereunder.
This does, in the FSF-sense, make the software less "free," in that the proprietary code made by the commercial licensee is not GPL'd. On the other hand, everybody else may continue to relate to the "rest of" the GPL code in the "old-fashioned" open source way.
The issue is not who has the power to act, but rather to whom the actors are accountable. A hierarchy works fine, indeed far better, than a committee, so long as there are adequate checks on the hierarchy.
As to decision-making by committee, the problem is that "None of us is as dumb as all of us." Consensus will almost never equate to moral decisions. This is one of the reasons why the United States operates under a constitution that strips the power of the majority to act in certain areas -- precisely because MORAL conduct often requires sacrificing the will of the many for the benefit of the few.
Some of my brothers here have suggested, in many cases eloquently, that the law should not permit someone to divest their inventions as part of an employment agreement, or even to propertize their inventions at all in order to protect employees from overreaching employers.
This cuts both ways. Many of us would love to have jobs where we are hired to do nothing, but think, dream and invent. Such a law precludes the job from existing? Who would pay to have you think, dream and invent, if they weren't entitled to the benefit of that bargain?
Some have observed that for those of us who invent, we need merely refuse to sign these agreements and refrain from taking the jobs. Others responded that this is nice, in theory, but a practical impossibility for those who want to work -- You have to sign to get the jobs. . And of course, there is always the entrepreneurial route of inventing, finding investors and trying to make it on your own. The truth, of course, is somewhere inbetween.
But if we legislate against alienation of invention, then those of us who invent won't even have the option to refuse to sign the agreements -- the only thing we can do is to go the entrepreneurial route, and then only if we permit the inventor to assign the rights to his invention to the company (how else to raise capital?)
So, at the end of the day, it may well be that maintaining the right to assign the invention GIVES MORE OPTIONS, at least in theory, than laws that preclude it. For those of us who prefer not to take risks and to work for invention mills, the inability to alienate deprives us from exchanging large upside of our inventions for a regular paycheck and the ability to work in fun labs with smart people. For those of us who want to be risk-takers and innovators, we are free under both regimes, unless you go all the way and deprive me of a property right to my inventions and the ability to assign it.
In fact, markets shift. Sometime, smart people are in great demand -- as we were during the bubble. Other times, anybody with technical chops will do. We can call our shots when in demand, and not when we are not. Those of us who are not as good have fewer options. But I am not sure how employment law gives any of us any more options.
That said, I think statutory protections assuring retention of demonstrable previous inventions not previously assigned and perhaps demonstrable previous inventions not related to the business --except for people who are hired to be pure R&D types-- and not made using company resources is not a bad idea. But taking it any further than that is very dangerous, and ultimately bad for us in my view.
This kind of thing is starting to be a hot issue down here with the US-Australia Free Trade deal about to be ratified and bring our intellectual property laws in line with Micros^D^D^D^D^D^D^D America's
Boy, do you have this one all wrong.
Microsoft made one of the worst lists in America to get, the list of the top 100 verdicts for last year, three times, as a losing defendant. Microsoft has been on the business end of more 8 and 9 digit patent infringement verdicts than any other enterprise in recent times.
On one hand, the boss was being abusively negligent. OK. Too bad, so sad, for the state. The problem with management clearly didn't stop with our card shark.
On the other hand, the employee engaged in conduct that, without authority from the owner of the computer, constitutes computer crime.
Whistleblower? Not! The employee had already reported the conduct. There was no retaliation at that time. Only after the employee engaged in conduct that was, well, freaky at best, was he fired.
The employee might have suggested that it would be possible to gather the information and get consent to act, without which his conduct was (i) criminal, but more important, (ii) highly unethical and not a little bit creepy.
of the approx 7,000,000 existing patents, only 614 have been revoked, and only 3927 have had their claims narrowed
True enough, so far as it goes, but misleading in fact. While it is true that 3927 patents were narrowed throught a USPTO administrative process called reexamination, and 614 patents were revoked, to compare those numbers to the 7 million patents issued without more is nothing short of ludicrous.
First, while 7 million patents issued since the late 18th century, patent reexamination has only been around as an administrative process since the early 1980s. The relevant measure for the ease of invalidating a patent through reexamination would consider not the total number of patents issued in the last 200 years, but rather the total number of reexaminations in the last 20.
Second, patent are invalidated through many processes, reexamination being but one of them. Patents may be, and are, invalidated through litigation and patent interferences as well. None of those statistics were offered.
No, it is not easy to invalidate the patent. But yes, it is very easy to lie with statistics to try to prove that point.
The correct usage is: would've never bought
I think a proper pedagogue and sesquipedalian would insist upon eschewing the contraction. The real horror was using "of" instead of "have."
Actually, I don't. To the extent I have a gut feeling about it, I have no evidence, and only answer when someone asks me the question along the lines of "what do you think?" Usually, they then challenge me, and I answer, "hey, you just asked what I thought. I'm sure its what I think, can't tell you why except for a few rationalizations, but have no idea if its right."
Here's to truth-seeking and honest debate! I credit you for acknowledging the limits of perception, and hope you recognize that I share your appreciation for the lack of trust in the non-falsifiable.
That said, please review what I wrote -- I was not referring to the stats you excoriated.
Best,
A
Please stop twisting words. Copying is not stealing. Not in the law, and not in the minds of the general population.
This is petty pedantry. Indeed, the copying of a work is not the taking and asportation of the personal property of another, which is one definition of the word, to steal. On the other hand, it is stealing, per Webster's Third New International, "to appropriate and use as one's own " Also, if you look up "copy" at the webster's online website, you find "steal" as a "related word," and vice-versa.
Whether or not you deem it to be akin to boosting a ferrari, make no mistake about it. The law treats such conduct as criminal in many cases, and the victim (owner of the infringed copyright) is entitled to significant civil remedies -- indeed, better remedies than would be available under a mere civil theft statute.
Wait -- you're trying to tell me that the BSA's report on the billions that the software industry is losing is based on some sort of fact? It's just as bullshit as saying that pirating software increases the userbase.
.
. .
In any case, is it that difficult to believe that piracy increases a userbase? I totally believe that piracy has almost certainly helped Microsoft reach market dominance
Right, but I presume from what you wrote above, we must be able to conclude that your total belief is "just as bullshit as saying that" BSA suffered all those damages?
Wait -- you're trying to tell me that the BSA's report on the billions that the software industry is losing is based on some sort of fact?
No, that is a straw man, and not what I said.
The BSA objectively estimates, not that it is losing all that money, but rather that the value of the software infringed is equal to that money. The conclusions drawn from those statistics are legitimately questioned in terms of the reasonable amount of actual loss, with arguments to be made on both sides.
To be clear, this is precisely my sentiment. To the extent the views of the original author are correct, that is, that familiarity breeds commercial success, this is not an argument for infringement, but for non-infringement and creating or substituting free alternatives. To the extent he is not correct, it is that much stronger an argument not to infringe.
My view is that whatever one might think about the Coyright Act, the chose in action and the copyright itself it is in fact the personal property of the author and owner. Don't infringe the rights of another, if for no other reason than they are not your rights. Make your own.
but the larger the user base that knows your software, the more valuable it is and more likely it is to be purchased
And the more widely distributed for free is the software, the less valuable it is and the less likely it is to be purchased.
Here's the deal. Duplicating my software, without my consent, is NOT flattering to me, nor is it beneficial to me. If it were, I would give it away for free, or give limited versions for free, as I choose.
Still, a hax0r kiddie who steals a copy of Autocad is no skin off of anyone's back, because he was never a potential customer to begin with. But if he learns it, and eventually ends up in the business world, then that's one more license sold for Autodesk.
A common rationalization not borne out by statistics or experience. As between the freeloader who wants to take software for free, and the software vendor who wants to sell software, I leave it to the latter to decide what is the best, most likely way for them to optimize the relationship.
In any case, the hax0r kiddie who steals a copy of Autocad had better do so covertly -- for serious damages and possible criminal responsibility await if he gets caught.
All things considered, why steal software that isn't yours? If they won't give it to you for free on your terms, make your own. if you can't, and can't human engineer yourself a legitimate copy, but nevertheless descide to steal from people without permission, please OH PLEASE, spare me the homily how you are doing the vendor (or society) a service by training the workforce.
Man, you are just another drag on us all.